Restaurant Australia’s successful launch of food and wine campaign has helped Tourism Australia to drive a significant increase in the number of visitors and visitor spending. The campaign launched in 2013 focused on serving the finest food produce from Australia in stunning locations.
The campaign also targeted the upscale or luxury travel segment for providing the cultural foodie travel experience all over the country. Research shows that only 26 percent of the consumers across the country’s key markets make a connection between Australia and quality food and wine prior to their visit, according to Lisa Ronson, Tourism Australia CMO.
She noted that, the research shows that when these visitors are asked about the link between Australia and food and wine after they leave the country, more than 60 percent make the connection, and that Australia came second only to France. The big gap between perception and reality motivated Tourism Australia to launch the food and wine campaign.
Data for March 2016, two years after the launch of the campaign, showed a 21.1 percent increase in spending on wine and food experiences by international tourists. On year-on-year basis, the spending by visitors on wine and food alone increased by $493 million in 2015.
This meant that culinary-themed purchases accounted for 20 percent of the total visitor spending. The data also showed that over 960,000 international tourists visited an Australian winery in 2015, representing a 37 percent increase from last year.
Latest material added to the enormous library of website content created and updated once in three months as part of the campaign features Chris Hemsworth (Australian movie star), culinary activities by aborigines, seafood preparations in new coastal destinations and popup restaurant by Ren Redzepi, celebrity chef from Denmark, among others.
Lisa Ronson said that the content is created keeping in mind aspects such as what consumers are looking for, where the consumers are at, what is driving them, and what they are searching for. She added that several different data points are being made use of for developing content instead of just taking a spray-and-pray approach.